Day 32, Saskatchewan Crossing

After nearly 500 kilometres of despotic rule, the sordid reign of The Spunky Monkey (otherwise known as John) had at last come to an end. He was hurtling along the David Thompson Highway in the passenger seat of some good samaritan’s vehicle at speeds greater even than his own relentless walking pace. Calgary awaited, and then home, where he was scheduled to make a sperm donation in a week’s time. No joke, that’s going to be one speedy baby.

The Slovenly loafer and The Flea-Bitten Tramp, bloated with their newfound independence, were sprawled woefully on the front lawn of the Saskatchewan Crossing Resort after some gastronomic indiscretion at that morning’s buffet. The sun beat down upon their overfull bodies, eliciting soft moans of remorse. Flea, having come out on top of an imaginary eating competition in which he alone participated, occasionally whispered “The Champ” under his fitful breath.

Eventually, the sorry pair roused themselves and limped to the reception to pick up the food box they’d delivered there from Calgary a little over a month earlier. Skulking around the hotel, they sought refuge from the mounting sun in a dimly lit, seemingly forgotten, room under the bar, which served as a recreation area. There, next to the table tennis table, the resupply box disgorged its contents and the boys appraised the next eight days’ supplies with an apprehension that stemmed as much from their recent food-coma as from the estimated weight of this new haul. They were missing a few perishables–cheese, notably–but it would have to do. The cheese for sale at the Resort store came in at a preposterous 14 CAD for 200 grams. 

Slov made use of the desktop computer in the rec room, writing and formatting the Trudge Report on–oh merciful god!–an actual keyboard as opposed to the sorry excuse for a smartphone he was generally stuck with. He was typing manically away when the door swung open. Silhouetted in its frame, like a single-action revolver-toting hero in a 1950s Western, was Larry. “Howdy boys!” Slov and Flea had met Larry on the previous section and were chuffed to see their garrulous friend again, having left him motor-jawed and frightfully itchy back on the Howse River Flood Plain. Larry scrutinised the activity taking place on the desktop computer and Slov explained to him the harebrained enterprise of trying to maintain an account of a thru-hike so ludicrously detailed that it had thus far required approximately two sentences per kilometre. 

“Writer, huh? I have a cousin who’s a writer.” Larry itched his arm thoughtfully. “You remind me of him. Similar vibe.” 

“What, like, attentive?”

“No, that’s not it. More like…”

“Eloquent?”

“More like… agitated. Yeah. Agitated.”  

After enduring various infuriating formatting related debacles, Slov finally published the latest blog and blew off some steam beating Flea at table tennis, played while wearing their now very hefty packs. Together they set off to find an innocuous spot a few kilometres down the road where it wouldn’t cost them hundreds of dollars to sleep. They walked an hour, pitched on the banks of the Saskatchewan River and ate dinner just as the sun gave the mountains one last lick. As is customary on the GDT, camp was a veritable mosquito hell, but otherwise dandy. Slov slung their groaning bear-proof kevlar sack in a large, dead tree which was half falling down the bank, and they settled down for the night.

They reflected that now the Spunky Monkey was gone, it was finally possible to direct their attention to more important things than the allegedly comical degeneracy of the Kiwi accent and how slow Flea and Slov walk. They could quit the incessant games of 20 Questions and its variations, 10 Questions–Lord of the Rings Characters and 3 Questions–Orcs With Speaking Parts (the latter of which invariably started with “Is meat back on the menu, boys?”). Now they could think and talk about the truly important things. Namely, books and Buddhism.

Down the bank, the water rolled past, making the sound time makes–no sound at all–as it carries downstream all that once was. Gone now were the first 650 kms of the GDT, the places, the faces. Gone now Slov’s left camp shoe, his original can of bearspray, however many pairs of sunglasses and what little vestige of dignity he began the GDT with. Gone now the rosy cheeks of the Spunky Monkey, his withering writing feedback and lacerating observations on character, his anarchic humour and the cute little whimper he emitted when lowering himself into freezing bodies of water. Gone his spunk and whimsy, his impossibly white buttocks and sweet tender heart. Such were the thoughts that filled the silence that the boys lapsed into in their friend’s fresh absence. May the Spunky Monkey forever remain in their hearts.

Day 33

The boys were up bright and early for a spot of meditation. It was the first day proper on section E. It looked to be a doozy: 30kms to Pinto Lake, 2000m up climb and 1500m down, all while toting some rather hefty packs. The highest point on the GDT was scheduled for mid-afternoon.

Slov set off in front and made good time, cutting loose with a few choice bear calls of the Washout-sanctioned Booooooweeee! variety as he made his way to the Owen Creek trailhead. Rounding a corner, his demented call still reverberating through the affrighted trees, he encountered a half dozen manly-looking men drinking coffee amidst SUVs stacked with rods and guns. Slov chirped a “Morning gents!” at the bemused crowd. One of the men made a snarky and geographically misinformed comment about scaring off kangaroos as he hustled through. 

The Owen Canyon Trail presented a stiff start to the day: steep, full of deadfall, and a bit hairy in places. At the canyon itself, water had carved a slot deep into the rock and rushed past in lightless depths far below. A couple hours climbing and a schlep through Owen Creek itself had Slov nearly at Owen Pass. Then, in the near distance, he saw an impressively tall figure poking up above the jumble of rocks: “Washooouuut!” 

Washout warned away a hug: he’d been sick the last few days. He asked where Flea was. Slov explained that now there was no Spunky Monkey to crack the whip he was taking his sweet time. Washout was headed to Pinto Lake to camp for the night too. Flea rounded the corner fifteen minutes later. He’d stopped and done some man-talk with the hunter gatherers. They’d given him a muffin and a peach, which he was fairly chuffed about.

“All they gave me were mocking taunts!” Slov complained.

“That’s because you don’t know anything about trout fishing my friend,” Flea explained.

Perspiring like crazy under the vaunting sun, they made their way up through a landscape that looked more like Mars than Canada. At the pass they got their first look at the highest point on the GDT: the next saddle over, which lay on the far side of the deep, shapely bowl which cradled the famous Michelle lakes. The lakes themselves were an impossible shade of blue, practically neon: the sort of unreal water colour you associate with the Bahamas. At least until you get in. After a frigid bath, Washout and the boys draped themselves, au natural, over the lakeside rocks and did a spot of tanning.

It was remarked that this was perhaps the perfect year to do the GDT. It had certainly been hot, but the crew had been subject to very little in the way of rain and wind, and the other elements–including, thankfully, fire–had been on their best behaviour too.

Washout set off into the heat and struggled up a despolate scree slope to the highest point. He popped off a “boo-oooo-weee!” at the top which the boys heard from kilometres away. Galvanised into action, they abandoned their lakeside idyll and set off into the hot maw of the day. On the way up, they crossed paths with a Frenchman who looked sufficiently weather-beaten to be a thru-hiker. He was: a south-bounder! The first the boys had met. How’s it been, they asked. “After Jasper, amazing, thee most bootiful” he said, gesturing for emphasis at the iridescent lakes a couple hundred metres below. “Secshun G…” he paused and cast a flinty stare into the middle distance. “Secshun G was fooked up.”

At the highest point the boys decided to drop their packs and scramble up the neighbouring peak. At a tidy 2800 metres, it offered the best view they’d yet seen on the GDT. Way out to the east, the mountains yielded to prairie. To the west, the mighty Columbia Icefield lay like across the mountains like a freshly laundered napkin on a table. Flea pointed out a strange cloud formation in the northwest. It was fluffy and white and reared up from behind the mountains like the head of the world’s largest cauliflower. 

The boys scrambled down, re-donned their packs and made a bruising descent into the next basin. All the while, the monstrous cauliflower spread and darkened. As they began ascending again to the third and final pass of the day it blocked out the sun and most of the sky; Flea and Slov were forced to admit the existence of a wildfire. They sent a satellite message to the relative they deemed least likely to freak out, asking them to check nearby fire warnings. Then they made their way warily and wearily down to Pinto Lake. 

It started to rain ash as they approached camp, just before sundown. They arrived more tired than they’d been since they had Covid in the High Sierra. Camp was fairly full. Washout was there polishing off his dinner. No one really knew what the situation was. Slov made a joke about mass cremation and no one laughed. He and Flea waded into the lake and prostrated their bodies in its muddy shallows. 

Day 34

The fire stayed parked up on the otherside of the range overnight, but smoke still smothered the sky in the morning. The flat light that filtered through accorded with the mood prevailing among the Washout and the boys. This mood did not improve when they headed out from camp along a promising trail that took them in completely the wrong direction. When they did make it back to the correct trail, the going was grim and squelchy. Mud sucked at their shoes along the Cline River. Up Cataract creek, you were lucky to get two dozen steps without encountering a downed tree. A boulder covered in ancient pictographs was the highlight of the morning, and provided a welcome opportunity to engage in reflections about how indigenous peoples once made journeys of this nature without vibram-soled trail runners or nylon tents and probably complained a fraction as much. 

Washout forged ahead in the afternoon. He’d booked a pad at Boulder camp for the evening. Slov and Flea planned to camp under Cataract Pass, way up high. The smoke lingered but seemed less menacing. The forecast on the sat phone showed mild 4km winds and a mere 20% chance of rain, so they were surprised when, just as night fell, the rain started hosing down and their tents billowed like sails in a storm. They were being broadsided by powerful gusts. The boys scurried around in the downpour, reinforcing guy lines and pinning their tents as close to the ground as possible. 

Inside them, the sound was deafening. Slov had a short hard think about why he was here on a godforsaken pass in a storm cowering in a flimsy nylon edifice, rather than snuggled up at home with his girlfriend, and couldn’t produce a satisfying answer. A singularly devastating gust all but ripped the tents out of the ground and the boys made the call to decamp. They’d have to hustle an hour or more in pelting rain and wind and dark down the mountain to find a sheltered spot where they could camp in innocuous illegality. Miserable at the prospect, they packed up the interiors of their tents, donned their rain gear and were just about to head off when the wind slackened. They waited 10 minutes. 20. A few strong gusts still tore through but the storm seemed to be easing. Relieved, they unpacked their gear and re-inflated their sleeping pads, unfurled their quilts and settled in to sleep. It was nearly midnight. They were exhausted. Something large moved about outside the tents. Probably deer, maybe moose, maybe bear; the boys were too tired to care.

Day 35

The next morning, calm. A river the colour of wax lazed past the campsite towards the terminal moraine. On the other side of the valley a mountain like the uplifted dome of a sperm whale reared into a dawn. Flea and Slov agreed on a lunch spot and set off independently. Sequestered safely in the past, the storm morphed into a harmless dream, an amusing anecdote, an episode-to-be in a ludicrously detailed tramping blog. A wonderful morning’s walking was had: down towards the whale head mountain, east along the Brazeau valley, then north again up towards Jonas shoulder. 

Sometimes, as they trundled along a riverbank or crossed some alpine meadow, identity slipped out of the frame, leaving behind nothing but a bundle of senses and a parade of sense-objects. Colours, forms, and the eye beholding them. Birdsong in the ear. A large nose sampling nature’s vast perfumery. The tread of feet upon the earth, the taste of the forest on the tongue. The waft of emotions and the forever-flicker of thoughts. No one at home, no Slov, no Flea, just an organic machine bumbling along from A-B. “And that’s all there is”, Slov reflected, as he ambled along that morning, “you cobble it together in a story and call it a life and live in it.”

The previous day’s low morale subsided with the gale. A buoyant spirit presided. At the lunch spot, the boys made the acquaintance of a quadruple (that is, two couples hiking together) who invited them to their camp for what they advertised seductively as “Snack Happy Hour.”

At Jonas Cutoff Campground that afternoon the quadruple arrayed a magnificent feast. Chips, crackers, sour gummies, cocoa dusted choccy almonds and cheese, heaped upon plates in a manner befitting the banquets of the European royals from centuries past. While eating, the quadruple were horrified to learn that Flea and Slov had lost their safeties on their bear cans and had replaced them with small sticks wedged under the trigger. They spoke at length of how a friend of theirs had accidentally sprayed himself when he fell off his mountain bike. They’d had to cover him in towels soaked in yoghurt before the helicopter arrived to fly him to hospital. They extracted a solemn promise from Flea and Slov, who had neither yoghurt nor towels at their disposal, to replace their safeties. Then, chastened, the boys made their way to a horse camp a few kilometres along where they were to stay the night.

Day 36

The next morning they practically had to swim through the vegetation hemming the trail: it was dense and very thoroughly moistened from overnight rain. Cold, too. Slov sported his rain jacket, rain pants and three pairs of gloves: inners, outers, and waterproof mitts. He felt vaguely invincible, a feeling which more than made up for the mockery he’d endured for packing “Three pairs!?” of gloves. After a few hours, he and Flea reached a junction where the GDT veered right on a trail that a sign emphatically stated was “no longer maintained by Parks Canada.” The guide for the ensuing section explicitly recommended pants. 

The terrific prints of an adult male Moose cropped up whenever there were softer muddy patches of trail which, this being the GDT, was often. The Moose itself was not to be seen, although a slatternly porcupine in a spindly sapling took umbrage at the approach of the equally slatternly Slov. The boys took a plunge in a murky lake up on Maligne Pass and soon after caught up with ye olde Washout who had every item of his gear strung up to dry around a clearing. The boys followed suit, exclaiming animatedly about the quasi-hurricane of two nights ago. Washout, who’d largely recovered from his cold, graciously ceded his napping spot and resumed the toilsome journey while the boys lay down for a little siesta.

The 10 kms post-nap walking to camp closed out with a harrowing stretch bushwhacking through riparian willow. Slov looked over his shoulder at Flea who was thrashing like a crazed animal through the scrub. “If I take one more step Mr. Frodo”, he said, “it’ll be the farthest from home I’ve ever been.” 

Washout greeted them at camp with some old-school reggae tunes and they reviewed the next day’s agenda. Bushwhacking. River crossing. More bushwhacking. Defile the famously beautiful Maligne Lake by dunking themselves in its otherwise pristine waters. Then, glory of glories, a buffet at the Maligne village.

Day 37

Nothing increases a thru-hiker’s kph quite like the promise of a buffet. The crew hummed along so fast that they didn’t even notice they’d taken wrong turn #147 of the GDT. They found themselves on a scenic route that skirted the lake and promptly found a secluded cove where they might disrobe without offending the sensibilities of more civilised visitors to the area. They had stripped and started slowly wading in when a large ferry, replete with several dozen camera-toting passengers, emerged from behind the large rock the boys had relied on for privacy. 

Freshly washed and looking, as far as things go on the trail, rather dapper, the trio headed to the buffet. Flea made promises to his apprehensive stomach that he knew in his heart of hearts he would not keep. Fortunately for his plaintive belly, the buffet was closed. Washout and the boys got a surprisingly reasonably-priced chilli bowl from the Lake House Cafe next door instead. The sweet-smelling crowds looked straight out of a commercial for laundry detergent. Flea and Slov, on the other hand, hadn’t showered in 350 kilometres and it had been 650 kilometres and four whole weeks since their last opportunity to wash their clothes.

Predictably, Flea succumbed to the siren call of unlimited refills. He started off moderately enough with a couple of coffees and a soft drink. Then, to the mounting disgust of Washout and Slov, he downed no fewer than six iced chocolates before admitting he felt “kind of unwell.” He and Slov set off in the early evening for camp. Slov, highly caffienated, had a big bounce in his step and more pep than he knew what to do with. He hurtled along on the first bit of well-maintained trail they’d seen for days, exclaiming about the joys of perambulation, the debt we owed Homo Erectus for pioneering the two-legged gait, and so on. Flea, carrying three extra kilos in chocolate milk alone, was somewhat less enthusiastic.

The boys’ allocated tent pad was a dubious little bowl which, as always, was only big enough for one of their tents. They pitched Flea’s fly without the 1-person inner so they could both squeeze under, and hurried through dinner. A few drops started to fall. 30% chance of rain on the Sat-phone had been forecast–the highest percentage they’d seen thus far. As darkness settled on the land they stashed as much of their gear as they could in the bear-lockers and hunkered down under Flea’s fly. A sudden flare of light illuminated the interior. Thunder that did a lot more than clap followed a half-second later. Slov, for whom the world of antiquity is never far from mind, said he better understood now why the Greeks put Zeus in charge.

The rain doubled in intensity. There was no 30% about it: it was absolutely pelting down. Seemed to be coming in under the fly a bit, too. The boys scooched thier towards the centre, broaching ever greater degrees of fraternal intimacy. Thinking prophylactically, they made, from sticks and dirt, a small dyke around the perimeter of their sleeping area. Slov propped up the corners of his groundsheet with his camp shoes. “This will be good for the blog!” he exclaimed merrily.

“I hate it when stuff is good for the blog,” Flea groaned. “Why is it that what is good for the blog is always terrible for us?” 

Slov pulled out his phone and started jotting down notes.

“Don’t write the blog now, we’re in crisis!” Flea cried. 

Meanwhile, the waters lapped menacingly at their haphazard defences. The tent pad was now a lake several inches deep. A note of hysteria creept into Slov’s voice as he realised how vulnerable he was in his position on lower lying terrain. Flea unfurled his tent inner with its waterproof bathtub bottom and slipped himself and his sleeping pad inside. Slov’s tent inner was in his pack in the bear boxes down the hill. 

“I think I need to pee” said Flea. 

“DO NOT use the piss porch!” pleaded his long-suffering companion, “it will come back to haunt us.”

At that moment, the dam broke. Water gushed in accompanied by a torrent of expletives. Slov’s camp shoes floated away. The water spilled over his groundsheet. His sleeping pad was afloat. Flea, laughing maniacally, forgot his earlier qualms about documenting during crisis and began filming Slov as he desperately gathered his sleeping quilt atop his Thermarest, which now moonlighted as a swimming pool lilo. Lightning clattered against the mountains again as Slov chased down his camp shoes. Donning them, he hightailed it in the nude down to the bear box. His pale buttocks retreated into the storm-wracked dark.

Clad only in his mis-matched camp-slides and his head torch, Slov grabbed his tent and searched frantically for another spot he could pitch it: Parks Canada regulations be damned. Trees loomed out of the night; branches scraped his exposed skin; the rain hosed down. Lightning struck in frightfully close proximity. Finally, he found a marginal patch of flat-ish, un-flooded ground and hurriedly pitched.

When poor Slov finally lay down his weary head, most of his gear was way down the undesirable end of the soakage spectrum. Even so, he was warm again and ready to sleep at long last. For some accursed reason, however–perhaps it was the static in the air–he found himself besieged by erotic fantasies. The lightning lit up lurid forms behind his closed eyes: bodies contorted with pleasure in the smokey mise-en-scene of a Berlin nightclub, sweaty faces gleaming in the dark flaunting the cracked grins of the debauched. Slov pleaded with his subconscious for relief: to no avail. Only after he had taken matters into his own hands was ignoble Slov able to sleep at last.

Day 38

The next morning the sky was a shade of blue so innocent it almost qualified as gaslighting. Slov and everything he owned needed a good tumble dry. Washout’s tent pad, unlike the boy’s, had not washed out. In fact, the boys were the only ones in camp who’d experienced Genesis-level flooding. Washout boosted early, hoping his long legs would make short work of the Skyline Trail and get him to Jasper, 50kms away. 

Flea and Slov set off at a reasonable clip not long after. The trail was marvellous. Two people wide! No downed trees to climb over, no rivers to ford, no riverside willow to thrash through while yelling inchoate obscenities at no one in particular, just the pure unadulterated joy of bipedal locomotion. At points they found slurries of pea-sized hailstones a foot deep. It had been one hell of a storm. The sky maintained its “who me?” look as the boys cleared the treeline and hurtled through an expansive mountainscape that seemed to have been dropped from a great height. All the rocks were smashed to bits. The ranges looked like they’d been swept together by someone who started cleaning up the mess but gave up before they got the dustpan involved. 

A giddy sort of joy clambered into the boys palpating hearts. They left the trail after Little Shovel Pass and scrambled along an adjacent ridge for a few kilometres, appraising the high country views before bounding back down the scree to Curator Lake. The lake was nestled in a formidable basin under “The Notch,” the 2500m high point of the Skyline. It boasted water of a head-strong blue and temperatures that’d make seals think twice. The boys, rather less amply padded than their fin-footed friends, nevertheless took the plunge, punching the air with a few hearty whoops. 

Invigorated, they zipped up the pass to The Notch, ditched their packs and scooted up a nearby peak to survey the mighty Athabasca Valley. It was wider and shapelier than any they’d seen just about anywhere in the Rockies. It had been formed by a glacier of the same name which originated in the ginormous Columbia Icefield that they’d seen from afar on the first day of Section E. At gravity’s insistence, ice from there had furrowed these mountains like a plough furrows soil. The Athabasca River wended lazily east along the channel left by its icy forebear. It had coughed up the township of Jasper on its banks. Perched up high, enthroned amidst geology’s glory, the giddy feeling that had jogged the boys’ knobbly frames up those hills was sublimated into something else. Something sweet and still and almost like sadness. Flea stood there with his hands loosely clasped and a tender expression on his face, making the little moans he makes when he is mightily impressed. The clouds wafted about, looking gorgeous. The landscape shaded darkly off into the distance in every direction. “Oh man” he said. “Oh man.” 

There is a subtle but persistent anxiety that limns the mind at all hours: how to live the life given, how to spend this uncertain allotment of days? Precious are the moments that this feeling is in abeyance, when here and now is how. One day, hopefully not too soon, one of these boys will die. There will be an assembly of family and friends and the remaining boy will lift a few words of remembrance over the supine body before it is burnt and dispersed, or laid underground to let go of itself in due course. Sometime later, the other boy and his body, likewise. All this is well established by precedent. The atoms they borrowed will continue on their vagrant way, tumbling forever down the wide, shapely valley of the world.

For the time being, however, The Flea-Bitten Tramp and The Slovenly Loafer are alive and walking. Soft machines are still plying their mysterious industry in the boys chests, abdomens and skulls. Their tendons clutch bone with the stubborn insistence of the living and the trail ahead beckons them across the cracked altar of the high-country. The boys have a good long happy look at each other and submit once again to thru-hiking’s only imperative: onward, heathens! 

They arrived at Signal camp not long before sunset, quaffed their customary half-kilo of couscous, tomato paste, tahini and olive oil, donned their camp shoes and beetled up to a lookout spot for the final rays of the day. “It doesn’t really feel like we’re walking when we’re in your camp shoes,” observed Flea. “We strollin’.”  

They reclined on a rock and took in their last helping of majesty for the day. To the west, the Rockies’ misshapen teeth punctured the sun. The clouds donned vestments of red and gold and wafted across a purpling sky. Jasper lay in a pool of shadow at the valley bottom. Beyond it, proud, silent ranges loomed, making a mockery of modesty, rupturing the earth hundreds and hundreds of kilometres yonder into the unpeopled wildernesses of the frigid north. That way lay the boys’ path–the infamously rugged final chapter of the Great Divide Trail. That way lay the future, brewing its implacable weathers. Flea and Slov knew nothing of the hardships lurking in the north. There on Signal hill they knew precious little about anything at all, clueless as babes at the breast and nestled just so in the warm and capacious bosom of brotherly accord. Darkness came on, and they strolled back down Signal Hill to the nylon shelters they called home. Somewhere, in a lab in the British Isles, the Spunky Monkey was probably jizzing into a test tube. Everywhere on this spinning globe the vast, motley cohort of the living and breeding strolled on, sticky and indefatigable and bound for who knows where.